The present invention relates generally to the ordering and provisioning of physical layer links in telecommunication networks and, more particularly, to the service provider ordering of such links.
In providing telecommunication service to customers different service providers may use different carriers to provide the physical links between different nodes in a network. These carriers typically maintain separate physical network infrastructures/links for carrying voice and data communications traffic. Such physical links are typically capable of being interconnected in order to provide seamless service to customers of a service provider. Thus, for example, a communication session originating from one carrier's infrastructure may traverse one or more other carriers' networks along the path from a source to a destination. In order to create these paths, service providers must provision physical links between and across the various networks.
For example, many corporate networks span a wide geographic area and, as a result, frequently require different carriers to operate together to achieve the necessary physical connectivity between various locations. Prior methods of establishing these interconnections are typically inefficient and require a relatively long period of time to complete. This is due, in part, to the fact that each carrier typically manages administrative and technical information related to the links within the physical network it controls using different, usually proprietary, methods and formats. Accordingly, whenever a service provider or one carrier requires the use of resources, such as the physical lines owned and operated by another carrier, manual negotiations via, for example, telephone, e-mail or postal service mail between the network management entities of the carriers and service providers must take place to establish the specific terms of the use of those lines. Additionally, once an agreement is reached over the use of these lines, there is typically some delay incurred during which the owner of the lines physically builds or logically establishes the necessary connections.
Once the physical connections are created and service is initiated between the links of different carriers, other inefficiencies and delays can arise due to the manual nature of managing the interconnected network. For example, frequent manual information exchanges (via, once again, telephone, or postal mail) between the service provider and/or carrier network management entities, such as information related to the status, maintenance and lifetime management of the links, are necessary to utilize and manage the bandwidth of the links. However, such manual information exchanges are subject to mistakes and/or misunderstandings that may lead to a misallocation of resources and/or actions that delay establishing a link or otherwise detract from the service to the customer.
Various automated network management tools have been implemented to monitor network status and performance and to eliminate the need for unnecessary manual exchanges of information. However, these tools are limited in their ability to monitor the physical links of various interconnected networks. For example, many such tools were designed primarily to monitor events and control traffic in the network layer and data link layer (i.e., layers 2 and 3) of the networks. As is well understood, these layers are layers within the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model of networks that generally defines 7 different layers in the network. Layer 1 in the OSI model, also known as the physical layer, is the layer that actually conveys a bit stream (i.e., electrical impulse, light or radio signals) through the network at the electrical and mechanical level. This layer consists of the hardware necessary to send and receive data on a carrier signal. Layer 2, also known as the data link layer, is the layer at which the physical medium is shared and where data link and media access to various devices is controlled. For example, in Ethernet networks, layer 2 is the layer at which network routing between media access control (MAC) addresses of individual hardware components is performed. Finally, layer 3 of a network, also known as the network layer, provides switching and routing technologies to create logical paths, known as virtual circuits for transmitting data from one network node to another. Routing and forwarding of communications traffic are performed at this layer, as are addressing, internetworking, error handling, congestion control and packet sequencing functions. Many network management tools used to monitor and control traffic at the network and data link layers of the network do not consider the physical layer (layer 1) and, as a result, management of this layer across interconnected carrier networks is difficult.